No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [54]
When he was a boy and she was a girl, they’d walk the strand and she’d talk to him about her latest craze. One week she’d be into knitting and she’d arrive with a woolly jumper full of holes and ten different stories about the making of it. The next week she’d be an avid swimmer, regaling him with the benefits of the breast-stroke. Then she’d find swimming lonely so she’d move on to Irish dancing, which was very social and she was quite good at it.
She made him laugh and he liked her flightiness: she was always moving on – but he noticed that she didn’t move on from him. Their walks on the beach were his favourite memory of her. It was when she was outdoors with the wind in her face and hair that she entertained him with her whole self, expressing her every thought about dreams and reality, habits and doubts, plans and obstacles. It was on the beach that she was most alive. And while he walked with his daughter, his wife’s voice was calling to him inside his head.
“Jack, put it on!” she said, and he could see her holding the oversized jumper and beaming at him.
“I don’t even know if I can,” he replied, trying to work out the neck from the sleeve.
She laughed. “Sure the way you’re built it won’t make a difference.”
He put on the jumper, which gaped at the neck and met his knees, with a hole in the side. He stuck his hand into the hole.
She took it and placed his arm at his side, covering it. “There now! You can’t see a thing wrong with it.”
“You want me to keep my hand by my side for all time?”
“I do.”
“And what if I need to use this arm?” he queried.
“Now, Jack, you’re a man of industry and I have no doubt that, whatever needs doing, you’ll find a way.” She laughed and he pledged that, for her love, he would.
Later, behind the dunes, she had stripped him of his new jumper and they had fooled around until they were interrupted by an old man and his wife tutting and warning them of the wrath of the local parish priest.
Now Jack laughed to himself and Mary squeezed his arm, bringing him back to the present. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Your mother,” he admitted. “You look so like her.”
“I know I do, Dad.”
“And you’re as bold as she was.”
“Maybe once,” she said.
They walked on in silence.
Later they had lunch in a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Each year they found a new place to eat – they liked to keep the day fresh. The food was good, and as Mary was driving, her dad allowed himself a Guinness, which was rich and creamy. He held it up. “Now that’s a good pint.” He admired it as an antiques dealer would admire a rare teapot.
After they had consumed their steaming beef stew, he placed a small wrapped box on the table. “That’s for you,” he said.
“Dad!”
“It’s not from me, it’s from your mother,” he told her, bowing his head.
Mary opened the gift. It was a solitary diamond on a short gold chain. “Dad, this is beautiful!” She was shocked and delighted.
“It was your mother’s engagement ring – I had it melted down,” he said, sad and happy at the same time.
“Why now?”
“Well, initially I thought that if a young man ever asked for your hand in marriage and he was a little stuck, I could slip him the ring.”
“Father!” Her outrage was pretence.
“Anyway, no one ever did because they weren’t given a chance to, and time’s pushing on so I thought ’twould be nice to see that diamond worn again and sooner rather than later.”
“So you’ve given up on me?” she asked, giggling.
“No. I wouldn’t say that – but I wouldn’t say I was holding my breath either!”
She looked at her diamond necklace. “Thanks, Dad,” she said, hugging him.
Mary and Jack arrived home around six. Pierre and Jessie had been handling the bar alone all day and it was a surprise to find them laughing together in the kitchen. Jack, the greatest victim of their ongoing dispute, had to ensure this was